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Joe Slowboat posted:Really, what good father doesn't have an instinctive revulsion to his child's face to the point of thinking of them as an impostor, pretending to be his dead wife? friendly reminder that not only do beings exist in this comic that have the specific ability to steal people's bodies but also this character has direct experience dealing with one of said beings directly on multiple occasions in multiple contexts going to go out on a limb here and say he's not saying he hates his daughter, he's saying he hates all the magical bullshit that stole his wife and now constantly exacerbates his already complex and fraught relationship with his daughter, and that his initial emotional response to forest annie's appearance was something that he had to put a lot of effort into getting past (which we, the readers, have already seen demonstrated) Bleck fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Apr 21, 2021 |
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Apr 21, 2021 16:40
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Bleck posted:friendly reminder that not only do beings exist in this comic that have the specific ability to steal people's bodies but also this character has direct experience dealing with one of said beings directly on multiple occasions in multiple contexts I didn't say he hated his daughter. I said his reaction to her face is instinctive revulsion. That's not good parenting! In fact, it's the kind of thing that means you probably should not be parenting that child at the moment. The Court is exacerbating things by actively pushing him into this position, but Tony's inability to stop taking out his issues on Annie is not to his credit as a father.
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Apr 21, 2021 17:16
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Joe Slowboat posted:I didn't say he hated his daughter. I said his reaction to her face is instinctive revulsion. That's not good parenting! In fact, it's the kind of thing that means you probably should not be parenting that child at the moment. The Court is exacerbating things by actively pushing him into this position, but Tony's inability to stop taking out his issues on Annie is not to his credit as a father. I find how you react instinctively to be far less important compared to how you immediately think afterwards and how you actually act.
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Apr 21, 2021 17:23
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Joe Slowboat posted:Tony's inability to stop taking out his issues on Annie is not to his credit as a father. Hmmm what awful things has Tony done to Antimony Embarassed her in front of her class; We'll give this an extra point or two to account for "take off your makeup" and "no you don't get a textbook" Took Renard away from her, temporarily. Forbid her from going into the Forest to do her job, temporarily. What else am I missing? This started out as a shitpost but now I honestly can't remember and don't have time to re-read almost a quarter of the comic for more examples.
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Apr 21, 2021 17:38
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He moved Annie out of her dorm with her friends and in with him. And of course he originally abandoned her for four years, although given the quality of his parenting he probably understood it as being for the best that way, even if Annie didn't. There was also the whole flesh antenna thing but he had no idea that was going to affect her so it's not exactly him taking his issues out on her. A lot of the apparent consequences of his first arrival turned out to be self-inflicted, though. In particular he never made her cut her hair; she did that herself (which is also why she wasn't happy with her classmates sending her a sympathy card about her new haircut). And of course she she was being very shy and reserved, but that was her not being able to process the emotions around it all rather than him doing anything specifically.
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Apr 21, 2021 17:43
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life_source posted:Hmmm what awful things has Tony done to Antimony Do some people here just think it's okay for a parent to act like such the weird distant emotionless robot like Tony does when it comes to Annie? Like that's not a normal way for a father to act to their child. I truely do not care that he's sad his dead wife and his daughter look a like, make an effort, drat. Yes those things above are not THAT bad overall but together with how he generally acts toward Annie is bad! The fact that he DID make that kind of effort to one Annie and not the other when there were two of them just makes it worse imo. Like I have confidence in Tom that this is all gonna go somewhere where in the end I don't end up hating Tony but right now I truly can't stand him.
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Apr 21, 2021 17:55
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Joe Slowboat posted:I didn't say he hated his daughter. I said his reaction to her face is instinctive revulsion. That's not good parenting! how you feel about your kid is not parenting refer to previous posts about how we should accept Tony's explanation of these feelings with the knowledge in mind that he makes a significant and demonstrable effort not to let them influence his actions to wit; in the scene where he felt this way, he is also the first person to come to Forest Annie's defense and give her the benefit of the doubt life_source posted:Hmmm what awful things has Tony done to Antimony and like I said, most of these are, like... actually fine - it's embarrassing to have to take off your makeup but it's also vaguely implied that it's against the rules in the first place - Renard is, again, as far as Tony knows, a murderous magical creature that very specifically has it out for his family - the Forest is an extremely dangerous place that is explicitly mostly at conflict with the court and letting any child just kind of wander in there, let alone sending them there for any reason is frankly hilariously irresponsible of the Court Tenebrais posted:He moved Annie out of her dorm with her friends and in with him. yeah, not only is it probably against some rules for her to remain there if she's held back a year, it's probably not a huge leap for Tony to come to the conclusion that her friends have not been a great influence and to be frank that's not... entirely wrong, in some cases, Macaluso posted:Do some people here just think it's okay for a parent to act like such the weird distant emotionless robot like Tony does when it comes to Annie? hot take; Tony's personality is almost exactly the same as Annie's
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Apr 21, 2021 17:57
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Bleck posted:hot take; Tony's personality is almost exactly the same as Annie's yeah but thankfully she literally can not commit the same sins with it
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Apr 21, 2021 18:02
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Joe Slowboat posted:Really, what good father doesn't have an instinctive revulsion to his child's face to the point of thinking of them as an impostor, pretending to be his dead wife? Truly, any complaint about his parenting is just failing to understand the loving, important task of depersonalizing your child to the point that they develop intense, magically augmented dissociation. it's an extremely ugly emotion, but the guy's been in an extremely ugly situation, having lost his wife to effectively a hereditary disease and then failing to cure his daughter of it as well. but tony's also smart enough to know that that emotion is misplaced, so he was the first to vouch for forest annie, invite her into his home and made an un-tony-like effort to make her feel at home when everyone else still treated her with suspicion i also get the impression he's, consciously or subconsciously, painting himself in the worst possible light here since dude's obviously extremely guilt-ridden about losing a loved one again which isn't to say he isn't an absolutely atrocious dad, i just think it's more of a case of him trying and failing due to his own tony-ness than not trying at all
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Apr 21, 2021 18:06
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Annie desperately wants to be close to her dad and Tony wants to be a good dad to her, but Tony absolutely needs therapy and support which he is not getting.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:10
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A lot of the things Tony does would be reasonable steps if done by a normal person, but Tony can't interact with other humans like a normal person and it seems like he's pretty much... just plain skipped all the steps that a Tony can't do? It might be reasonable to conclude that his daughter's friends are bad influences and to take steps to separate them... but Tony didn't actually seek out any information about this. It's logical to assume that Reynardine is dangerous and shouldn't be in a child's possession... but Antimony has been keeping Reynard for years without an issue and Tony didn't actually ask about how that came to be. There are a lot of things you could do to help Annie with the fact that she's been cheating on her schoolwork... but you should probably find out why Annie was cheating on her schoolwork before deciding on a solution. It seems like most of Tony's parenting solutions revolve around pretending his problems don't exist and hoping things work out, and this has had predictably terrible results. On the other hand, it seems accurate to say that it's still better than Annie having no parents at all, since, when you get right down to it, she's spent most of her formative years just tossed into boarding school without even an advisor in charge of her growth, while her father went years without calling. (I really think the Donlans (adult) don't get called out enough for being lovely friends who have probably made things worse by occasionally offering easy gestures of support but being unwilling to call Tony out or face the fact that he's very nearly as bad present as he was absent.)
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Apr 21, 2021 18:15
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Rand Brittain posted:(I really think the Donlans (adult) don't get called out enough for being lovely friends who have probably made things worse by occasionally offering easy gestures of support but being unwilling to call Tony out or face the fact that he's very nearly as bad present as he was absent.) have the donlans ever even visited surma in hospital, from what i remember annie only ever met any of them after her mother passed away
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Apr 21, 2021 18:22
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a cartoon duck posted:have the donlans ever even visited surma in hospital, from what i remember annie only ever met any of them after her mother passed away I believe Surma deliberately went somewhere they couldn't find her, because she didn't want them to watch her die. Honestly Surma was kind of a lovely parent, too.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:31
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Rand Brittain posted:I believe Surma deliberately went somewhere they couldn't find her, because she didn't want them to watch her die. I just reread "Annie and her Fire" and this was exactly it, yep. Seems to have been primarily Surma's choice. I get the impression they were really banking on Tony finding a way to save Surma for a long time, which...is not great in terms of planning for Annie's future. Speaking from personal experience, the best thing for Annie and Tony is probably therapy and then a real interrogation of whether Annie wants to continue to have a relationship with her dad or not. In-universe, the Court seems to have made both of those things impossible (forcing Tony to come back, and they'd potentially monitor whatever therapy occurred), which doesn't excuse any of Tony's behavior, but is pretty grim nonetheless.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:50
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Lotta this has already been cleared up in the comic tbh:
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Apr 21, 2021 18:57
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I think 'caused her to dissociate so intensely by shaming her in front of her friends as the first time she'd seen him in literally years, that she used magic to help her hyper-dissociate part of her soul apart from her' is much more important than the specific end goal of his actions in those scenes! A good parent and a bad parent can both tell a child not to cheat, but one of them does it in a way that causes the child to experience intense distress and trauma in front of her peers, destroying her ability to express herself and socialize for a while, and one of them doesn't. I'll let you fill in which is good parenting! E: Seconding the general call for 'holy poo poo get this man some therapy' - he can be an atrocious parent and still be someone who deserves compassion and support, just, not to be parenting a child. The Court, of course, is dealing with this by forcing him to parent and not getting him therapy.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:25
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Joe Slowboat posted:E: Seconding the general call for 'holy poo poo get this man some therapy' - he can be an atrocious parent and still be someone who deserves compassion and support, just, not to be parenting a child. The Court, of course, is dealing with this by forcing him to parent and not getting him therapy. This is the most accurate take, I think. No one's arguing he's a good parent, just that he might not be a bad person. He's no Diego or anything.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:44
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Tony is a lovely dad, due to being a broken person rather than a malicious one, but he does appear to be trying to be a better parent, the various versions of Annie seem to want to be around him rather than cutting him off, and it's not like she's otherwise been surrounded by a great environment.
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Apr 21, 2021 20:13
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Like the basic actions Tony took in that chapter don't sound like that bad of actions for a parent to take when you list them in that context. But the actual context is that he wasn't a parent at that point, he had disappeared without a word from her life several years ago, and this is stuff he did the minute he reappeared also without warning. Like, I don't think the court forbade him from reintroducing himself to his daughter sometime before she shows up to his classroom.
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Apr 21, 2021 20:22
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Ditocoaf posted:Like the basic actions Tony took in that chapter don't sound like that bad of actions for a parent to take when you list them in that context. But the actual context is that he wasn't a parent at that point, he had disappeared without a word from her life several years ago, and this is stuff he did the minute he reappeared also without warning. Like, I don't think the court forbade him from reintroducing himself to his daughter sometime before she shows up to his classroom. Yeah, this is where him being so broken comes in - he tried to do the most basic, robotic "what do I need to do with her right now" actions without any of the actual relationship-building he's scarcely capable of.
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Apr 21, 2021 20:31
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cropoval posted:I just reread "Annie and her Fire" and this was exactly it, yep. Seems to have been primarily Surma's choice. I get the impression they were really banking on Tony finding a way to save Surma for a long time, which...is not great in terms of planning for Annie's future. My theory was that Surma assumed Tony would not succeed, but allowed him to try. However, as far we can tell, it didn't seem like they had much of a plan for Annie after Surma's death than "Annie goes to Gunnerkrigg", so you might be right.
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Apr 21, 2021 22:05
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everyone says tony needs therapy but lets be real, tony would be the sort of person who walks into therapy masked and only addresses the most surface level of his issues. source - younger me
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Apr 21, 2021 22:06
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cropoval posted:I just reread "Annie and her Fire" and this was exactly it, yep. Man, that Tony looks nothing like the one in this chapter. It's probably just an adjustment of artstyle. Or it looks like that because he was more haggard at the time. Then again, a dramatically changing facial structure might just be hereditary.
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Apr 21, 2021 22:16
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Joe Slowboat posted:I think 'caused her to dissociate so intensely by shaming her in front of her friends as the first time she'd seen him in literally years, that she used magic to help her hyper-dissociate part of her soul apart from her' is much more important than the specific end goal of his actions in those scenes! friend if I were a parent of a child with a magical side whose main desire seems to be "Burn Things To Death" I would immediately make it my utmost priority to have them dissociate from it
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Apr 21, 2021 23:29
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Bleck posted:friend if I were a parent of a child with a magical side whose main desire seems to be "Burn Things To Death" I would immediately make it my utmost priority to have them dissociate from it Emotionally dissociating as a consistent coping mechanism, because it's the only way to handle the world around you, is traumatizing. Like, it's a form of trauma in itself. Plus, when did Annie want to burn things to death before Tony showed up? The only way she could handle her feelings after what he put her through was to shove them out of her, and that's incredibly unhealthy. He caused that; she's a child trying not to lash out. Defending him with 'I would also cause my child to dissociate their anger about me to the best of my ability' is... not the W you think it is.
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Apr 22, 2021 02:50
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Tony wasn't exactly a devoted parent before Surma's death either. Caring perhaps given we now know his whole goal was to save her from her fate, but suffering in silence doesn't make you a good parent just the same as suffering-and-then-holding-it-over-someone-else's-head doesn't. Recall the conversation between Donny and Antimony where he asks how much she knows about her father and she simply says he is a quiet man which means essentially "nothing". edit: Just saying it's not entirely surprising that Antimony's whole family has communication issues. It's a pre-existing condition for pretty much all of them. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Apr 22, 2021 |
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Apr 22, 2021 03:09
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Joe Slowboat posted:Defending him with 'I would also cause my child to dissociate their anger about me to the best of my ability' is... not the W you think it is. yeah you're really good at switching the language into being about what you want it to be but there's a marked difference between "my child's anger" and "my child's literal magical fire powers" here's a spicy take about Antimony: it is actually Not A Good Thing that she is a psychopomp and a fire spirit and a forest medium and etc. and Tony is seemingly the only person who understands this and gives a poo poo, but his attempts to divert her away from what is very obviously a dangerous and inhumane path are coloured by his unfortunate personality issues and subsequently denounced by Annie's entourage of enablers it would be great if Tony were better at communicating and didn't have all of these bad feelings about his wife's death tied up in his subsequent parental failures with regards to his daughter - even all that being said, his attempts at being a parent are still significantly better than everyone else's (which is, demonstrably, none at all) I do not think Tony is a good dad but I think the most realistic thing about the way he is written is that he's obviously Trying, and frankly the exaggerated attitudes about how he's apparently the world's worst dad and also world's worst person because he had the audacity to have emotional problems that are further exacerbated by unnatural and unrealistic circumstances is frankly irritating performative bullshit like you might as well say "gosh why doesn't Tony just Hold Space for Annie" and move on
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Apr 22, 2021 04:30
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I'm so mad people don't like the character that's constantly written to be unlikeable and distant.
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Apr 22, 2021 04:43
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Bleck posted:yeah you're really good at switching the language into being about what you want it to be but there's a marked difference between "my child's anger" and "my child's literal magical fire powers" No? Annie's not running around flamethrowering things before Tony shows up. Is she in a good place at that point? Obviously not, but it's not because she's got a fire spirit part of her. And yeah, I assume that the adult has more responsibility to handle things well than the daughter who will do anything she can to please him, which is the situation when he arrived. Had he been even fractionally kinder or more circumspect - or even told her about the situation in private before showing up as her teacher! It would have been a far less lovely thing to do. That fire spirit wanting to throw fire around after Tony treats her in an incredibly unkind way is transparently her being angry about what just happened, and she cut it off from her because she couldn't handle her experience of him. She wasn't even able to emote or communicate with her friends after she cut it off - it's a transparent depiction of emotional dissociation. There's a reason the art turned into janky child's drawings after he confronted her, and then she cut her hair and broke off her anger into her fire spirit part - which she did because she has a habit of assuming he knows best and forgiving everything he does, even when it involves literally bifurcating her soul to make it work. This is wildly unhealthy. Tony is a hurt person, but that doesn't excuse what he's done as a father, despite all his good intentions. He is not, right now, capable of being a good father to Annie (though he was briefly capable of being a functional father to one of the Annies, which was a step up). He's not capable of being a functional person! He needs help! And the Court is happily throwing gasoline on that situation because from their perspective, Tony being a wreck and Antimony being miserable don't matter as long as they have Carver's expertise. This family is not working, and insisting that it's the child's fault their relationship is dysfunctional won't make it work. Or, well, I hope it won't, because that would make this comic miserable. E: Hell, I like Tony as a character! But he's a character who is massively loving up his daughter's life because he's an awful father, and he knows it, and instead of recovering and finding a way to slowly be in her life, he's been catapulted onto center stage by the Court. In terms of characterizing the Court as massively callous, it's a great bit of writing. But that doesn't mean Tony's a good father even a little.
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Apr 22, 2021 04:47
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listen im just happy the thread moved on from making GBS threads on the comic for brushing the dbz fusion under the rug
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Apr 22, 2021 05:14
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dragon enthusiast posted:listen im just happy the thread moved on from making GBS threads on the comic for brushing the dbz fusion under the rug
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Apr 22, 2021 05:35
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dragon enthusiast posted:listen im just happy the thread moved on from making GBS threads on the comic for brushing the dbz fusion under the rug i can't believe tom just resolved the two-annies situation with a snap of zimmy's fingers and everyone's 200% fine with no complications whatsoever. what bad writing
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Apr 22, 2021 05:44
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Ditocoaf posted:i can't believe tom just resolved the two-annies situation with a snap of zimmy's fingers and everyone's 200% fine with no complications whatsoever. what bad writing Noooooo Fecha posted:Tony debate consumes all. Our only hope is to pivot to casting Coyote's voice actor Clearly that would be Brambleberry Coyotepatch
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Apr 22, 2021 05:48
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Ditocoaf posted:i can't believe tom just made the two-annies situation with a snap of loup's weird talon fingers and everyone's 200% fine with no complications whatsoever. what bad writing
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Apr 22, 2021 05:50
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catapede posted:Noooooo
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Apr 22, 2021 05:53
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Rumda posted:yeah but thankfully she literally can not commit the same sins with it Hot take- wait, someone beat me to it. Rand Brittain posted:Honestly Surma was kind of a lovely parent, too. But yeah, Surma, knowing what Tony was like, and knowing that Annie would eventually kill her and be left with him as the only remaining parent, kinda pulled a dick move on both of them by having a kid with him and then kinda making them both responsible for her own death. She also intentionally kept Annie away from any extended support network because she didn't want any of them to see her sick, and then sent her off to a place she thought would be be bad for Annie, or least whose badness she had used as an excuse for isolating her daughter. So Annie can't commit the same sins as her father, no but she could definitely commit a whole bunch of fancy new sins by combining the aspects of her mother and father both! Plus maybe throw in some of the valuable lessons she's learned from her other parental figures like Coyote, Ysgengrin, Eglamore, and the Court for good measure! I only just sort of realized how genuinely impressive it is she seems like a good and somewhat functional person considering how she's treated by the majority of the people in her life who have power over her. Ditocoaf posted:i can't believe tom just resolved the two-annies situation with a snap of zimmy's fingers and everyone's 200% fine with no complications whatsoever. what bad writing It was still pretty poo poo, yeah, but good job ignoring the reasons people thought it was poo poo and substituting your own made up ones I guess.
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Apr 22, 2021 06:08
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everyone is problematic aside from robox thanks
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Apr 22, 2021 06:18
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GlyphGryph posted:I only just sort of realized how genuinely impressive it is she seems like a good and somewhat functional person considering how she's treated by the majority of the people in her life who have power over her. I feel like one of the underlying themes of the entire comic is that Kat is the reason for this. Something something a good friend makes you a not poo poo person/evil machine god of machines
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Apr 22, 2021 06:22
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Has it been established that there are no therapists in The Court? Because basically all of Tony and Annie's problems could be solved by a combination of individual and family counseling. Like, talk about the problems they have with a professional instead of bottling their emotions up until they fester into unhealthy and self destructive habits. I guess that's kind of what Jones is doing now. Good job Jones.
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Apr 22, 2021 06:53
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All the therapists were in that building Coyote knocked over when he got mad Annie couldn't come out and play.
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Apr 22, 2021 07:22
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